It took me a while to get into this comedy series. It’s a sort of an English Seinfeld, the mishaps and accidents and emotional morasses of a stand-up comic with layers of slapstick added. The star, Robert Bathurst, is less convincing as the comic, better at the slapstick. Like the programme itself, he’s better at frolicking the half hour away in comedies of embarrassment and farce than he is at being all moody and deep. The plan, basically, is to get people running around, upset, embarrassed and wanting to hit or kiss each other.
When this Tuesday’s plot gets into its stride, we’ve got a man barking like a sex-hound at his wife while their friend, who has been house-sitting for them, tries to hide her illicit lover from her licit lover and former husband, who both come to call, while somehow they all end up on a chat show on a morning television programme. Then we get the emotional stuff about relationships breaking and repairing. We get people hitting each other. And we get excellently unnecessary jokes about flatulence.
Solid post-marital break-up comedy.